There aren't many things you can be sure of in IT, wherepredictions are rarely worth the pixels they're printed on. But it's hard toargue with the explosive growth of tablet computer sales and their enormouspopularity with consumers.

HP is to bring its innovative “classroom in a box”, a low cost solution for educational IT labs based on pre-installed schools equipment and thin client PCs in a refurbished shipping container, to South Africa.

Analysts and Microsoft business have questioned whether Windows 8 could persuade African enterprises to switch over quickly or completely. Some companies have argued that the switch-over could be slow and patchy, and most initial adaptation of the new OS could be in organisations with large mobile work forces at first.